Posts tagged “Topaz Studio”

I just love to photograph the big cats – they are so interesting and beautiful! This tiger image had fencing all over it and the Healing Brush in Topaz Studio (see sidebar for website link) actually took almost all of it out of the image – I was totally surprised. They have just recently added it into the program. For me to get it to work well a very small size of 0.03 was used and by dragging the brush first over the color that you want added in, it tends to fill in with that color. Then just a Curves Adjustment Layer for color adjustment and then a Levels Adjustment Layer for contrast correction for a bit of a vintage matte feel. A Color Look Up Table set to the TealOrangePlusContrast preset and the opacity to 29%. Topaz Detail was used to sharpen the face. A Red Luminosity Curve was used to add a little more contrast. A left side yellow-orange light leak was added to the image to lighten it up a little. Created a composite layer on top (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E), made it a Smart Object (right click on menu and select), and opened the Camera Raw Filter. Went to the HSL sliders and adjusted mainly the orange and yellow colors in all the sections to get the tiger color and background just right. Last step was to add the text – used the Streetlight script font. What a cool tiger!…..Digital Lady Syd

Felt an urge to paint one of my favorite subjects – the large cats. This beautiful Malayan Tiger was romping around at the Jacksonville Zoo, and definitely not stopping for a photo op. Luckily I spotted him and took the shot. (Okay – he was in his enclosure.) So this followed my basic painting workflow. In Lightroom a crop was performed and Serge Ramelli’s Bad Weather Basic preset was used and then adjusted. In Photoshop Topaz (see sidebar for website link to free program) Studio’s Sharpening Lens Blur filter was used to sharpen the image overall. Then one of my Corel painted textures was added underneath the tiger along with Jai Johnson’s Explorations (10) texture that was set to Linear Light blend mode and 55% layer opacity. On the Tiger layer, a black layer mask was created and the tiger painted and further defined in the Select and Mask panel. After than, just a lot of painting. One of the Mixer brushes that worked well on this image was a free one from Adobe called Munch-Round Ratty and was set to 45 pixels. to create a nice blend when painted over the edges of the tiger body. Several layers of both regular brushes and mixers to paint him in. An Exposure Adjustment Layer was used for the eyes, and Nik Viveza 2 was used to draw eye to his head. Finished off with a Curves Adjustment Layer to bring back contrast. It was a lot of to paint again!…..Digital Lady Syd

Sometimes it fun to just do something different! This actually took a lot of tweaking to get that romance novel or poster effect. Corey Barker offered one of his tutorials, Quick Hollywood – Inspired Illustrated Effect, for free so off I went. This is not quite what Corey’s poster looked like, but it still has a bit of that old movie magic. Several of the tips from his video were used which is how the illustrative look was created. The girl is called Wayra 11 from Liam Stock and the castle in ruins is called Winter Wonder stock 36 by Tigg, both at DeviantArt – must thank them for allowing the use of their images. Actually used Topaz Studio’s Basic Adjustment and Bloom Adjustment. Nik Viveza 2 was used to adjust the focal points in the image. Love the font called Star Full Inline which has eyeballs in it. The other font is called Dancing Script OT. Had to paint the face a little and added light fog on castle from Topaz Lens Effects. Used my snow effect called Snow1 Overlay and painted it off the foreground. On another layer, used Corey’s Particle Universal brush for snow on the girl and throughout. Last step was Topaz Texture Effects were the border was added. I think it is too hot right now and I am thinking of winter!…..Digital Lady Syd